A Tale of Two Trips

By Greg Gibbs

Finding your own bit of gold is the dream
of many Australians but for three old mates, Peter ‘Thommo’ Thomas, Peter ‘Salas’
Salamone and Greg ‘Gibbsy’ Gibbs, turning this dream into reality became an
overwhelming passion. Fuelled by stories in Australian Gold, Gem & Treasure
magazine and other media of fantastic gold discoveries, the trio set out to
make it happen. Their story involves two trips to basically the same location but
with vastly different results.

The first trip was in April 2010 to a
location in the Mount Magnet area of Western Australia. Much planning went into
this trip: alcohol and food were itemised and organised; detectors were hired;
music was selected; permission from the leaseholder to detect on his lease was
obtained; notice to the pastoralist that we were going to be on his property
was duly given; Miner’s Rights and myriad other potential issues were
addressed. Anybody with experience in prospecting who crossed our paths was quizzed
without mercy in the hope of gaining valuable insight into what we needed to do
to guarantee a successful prospecting venture.

The area we’d chosen was one where gold
nuggets had been found previously. We worked tirelessly, putting in five days
of dawn-to-dusk detecting for a grand total of a solitary sub-gram bit of gold.

When it comes to earning a reasonable return for
your efforts, an outsider might consider this gold prospecting trip a failure
but you can’t think solely in terms of financial gain as there are many other
rewards that come from an outback adventure.